About
The PSWS network
HamSCI established the Personal Space Weather Station network in 2019, and the working group dates from 1 January 2020, when The University of Scranton’s first NSF Distributed Array of Small Instruments (DASI) award (AGS-2002278, Track 1) began. Stations are affordable (roughly 100 to 1,000 US dollars per instrument) and are built and operated by professional researchers, students, and volunteer amateur radio operators working together. The network has been used to study the ionospheric effects of solar flares, solar eclipses, geomagnetic storms, and traveling ionospheric disturbances.
Since January 2025, the network has been expanding under an NSF DASI Track 2 award (see Goals). The expansion places standardized stations that combine all three receive instruments at low-noise sites across the United States, and adds GPS-disciplined WSPRSonde beacons.
Instruments
| Instrument | What it measures | More information |
|---|---|---|
| HF receiver (RX-888 SDR with KA9Q-radio and WSPRDaemon) | HF Doppler shift on many frequencies at once; WSPR and FST4W decodes | HF receiver, WSPRDaemon |
| Grape V1 and V2 | HF Doppler shift of time-standard stations on one (V1) or three (V2) channels | Grape 1, Grape 2 |
| VLF receiver | Natural VLF emissions and VLF transmitters, 3 to 30 kHz | VLF-WC |
| Ground magnetometer (RM3100 sensor) | The geomagnetic field, at about 3 nT resolution at 1 Hz | Magnetometer |
| WSPRSonde | Transmits GPS-disciplined WSPR and FST4W beacons on up to eight MF and HF bands | WSPRSonde |
Who we are
The working group is led by Dr. Nathaniel Frissell (W2NAF), The University of Scranton, and Dr. Kristina Collins (KD8OXT), Space Science Institute.
The Track 2 network is a collaboration of:
- The University of Scranton, lead institution, responsible for instrument deployment;
- Case Western Reserve University and the Space Science Institute, responsible for network operations and data quality;
- The University of Alabama, which runs the central database and website;
- New Jersey Institute of Technology, which leads the ground magnetometers;
- TAPR, WSPRDaemon, and Turn Island Systems, which support the hardware, the HF receivers, and the WSPRSonde transmitters;
- the HamSCI volunteers who build, host, and maintain the stations.
Host a station
HamSCI is looking for volunteers with quiet, rural sites to host PSWS instruments. See HamSCI searching for instrumentation sites and hosts. Volunteers may also build and fund their own stations; self-funded stations stay under their owners’ control and still receive support from the project.
Join the working group
Join the hamsci-psws mailing list (hamsci-psws@googlegroups.com). The group’s meetings are posted on the HamSCI calendar.